Cold day in paradise

 We again slept in a bit today, the previous day being both a fun time and a giant shit sandwich.  The goal today was visit the mastic villages, get our laundry done, take care of the insurance claim with the car rental place and have as much fun doing it as possible.

Personally i think we accomplished 3.4 of those things, news at 11.

I popped down to talk to Mr Roper about the laundry, he assured me his cleaning lady would pick it up and have it done today.  We totally believed him.

We then hopped in the car and headed south, having done the majority of the norther part of the island yesterday.  Southern Chios is flatter, which was nice, but specifically known for producing mastic, which comes from a tree, and it tastes a bit spearmint, and they make everything from gum and toothpaste to sling lotion and liquor out of it.  In southern Chios there are 3 specific medieval villages that have been living there for ages, and they grow and harvest the mastic in this tiny fortress towns.  It;s fucking lovely.

First village on the list was Pyrgi, which was the largest and most developed of the three.  The houses have these interesting patterns on them, that look painted on, but when you get up closer you realize they are all scratched out of the stone.  From top to bottom and underneath the balconies, they have decorated their village with a fervor that rivals west Olathe Kansas.  That’s a bit of joke.  Anyways, we wandered around, we had no agenda, except at some point we needed to eat lunch.  The tow was large, it took a bit to explore, at one point a dog started following us.  We went into this church that was built in 1100 ad, and the dog followed, but was chased out by the church lady and promptly ran into the back yard and took a sizeable dump.  The church was cool and not in a good way.  We wound our way back to the parking lot and the dog lost interested and we hopped into the car and headed out to village #2.

Olympoi was not far from Pyrgi, and was small enough that we drove past it before realizing that we drove past it. We pulled into a tiny parking lot and walked into the village.  It was small, it looked old but none of the buildings were decorated.  We made our way to the city center and saw no people, or maybe 1 people.  It took us less than 15 minutes to walk around through and out of the city.  It was lame and i feel like a lessor person for attempting to legitimize our travel there.

We had passed sign for the Olympoi Cave as we drove in, with bright pictures of stalagties lit up, and we thought this cave would save the tow from utter despair.  We went up the road and followed the sign towards the cave.  First thing we noticed when turning on the road was a Greek tank and a Mercedes Greek army Jeep thing guarding a bridge.  We drove pasted them wondered how terrible the Greek army was.  One of the things we realized on Lesbos was that these two islands are very close to Turkey, and currently Greece and Turkey are not getting along.  We saw tons of army folks, military bases and vehicles driving all over the place.  These bridge guards were terrible, we drove right threw, nobody got out to stop us, it was a joke. Even the army band guards bridges better than these guys.  So we drove up this hill, it was your typical tiny road, and at one point passed an army post, and then another army post, and then we came around the corner and we wish we had taken a picture of it, but there was a large red sign by the sign of the road with skull and crossbones on it and it was all in caps, in Greek and we had no idea what it said.  We still hadn’t reached the cave that had many happy signs pointing this way, but this scary sign seemed to say, maybe rethink your life choices.  So we flipped around and went back the way we came, past the terrible bridge guards who were looking at their phones and drinking coffees and got back on the road towards village 3.

Mesta, village 3 was a short distance away, and it too looked a bit more rustic than Pyrgi, but way more of a vibe than Olympoi had.  We immediately tried to use the WC next to the parking lot but it was locked and need euros to open and all we had were bills.  Boo.  A city bus dropped off a few people before we got to actually entire the city, so we rushed ahead of them to get the best shots without their stupid heads in our way.  The village had very little decorations like Pyrgi, but man, it seemed so cool and lots of little shops were open, one was run by a very sweet lady Despina, her family was from the village and she ran this cute shop and immediately tried to get us drunk.  She offered us to taste her families Soma, the wine, the mastica, it was wonderful but we still hadn’t eaten yet and so we had tiny sips and bid her adieu and wandered down to the town center where a wonderful young lady was playing Leonard Cohen in her shop.  There were a number of tavernas open, but none of them matched the one that Matt Barrett told us to eat at so we just chose the one were 3 ladies were home cooking, they took us into the kitchen to show us all they had made, and we sat down and ordered pretty much everything.  We ate most of it too.  They were so sweet and now fat from the lamb, we headed back to Despinas shop and bought a bunch of her wares.  It was special meeting, we talked about the island her family and we left as friends.

It was time to head back to town and take care of the car insurance deal, so back we flew and took care of that, it was fairly painless and Jw also filed claim with our trip insurance company to cover the costs.  Apparently minor fender repair in Greece costs 150 euros.  Go fucking figure.

After this non-event, we decided to check out the south coast and hit 4 of the coastal villages which were completely dead and not a soul in site.  It’s very strange how we go to Crete every year and that town is bouncing day and night, but on a island like Chios which is not a major destination, they don’t really start popping until June.  Oh well.

After this trip we headed back to town and waited for our laundry to arrive, which we were promised by MR Roper at any time.  Eventually there was a knock on the door and they cleaning lady handed us all of our laundry nicely folded in a large pile clean as the fresh fallen snow.  As soon as JW started to unravel the pile she exclaimed its all wet!  Somehow the cleaning lady forgot to dry anything.  Farts.  So we took all the cloths and spread them around the room, hanging what we could from hangers, some things out on the balcony, some things from the curtain rod, and underwear laid out across the bed with my trusty travel fan blowing them with a gentle loving breeze.

We had decided to hit a local place that many people raved about, which was a bit of a walk, and while walking there we went past a communist revolution protest or something, they were playing terrible music which would stop at certain points and some lady would start talking, etc.  it was silly, there were very few people paying attention and it was loud and annoying.

We got to the restaurant and it was closed.  There was a sign on the door that said they had changed their hours from 8-12 to 12-5.  Fuck a duck.  I was trying to pull up anywhere else to go on my phone, but it was very chilly and i just said lets go to the harbor and look for somewhere warm.  There was this dolphin place with indoor seat and we went there and had a lovely meal.  Too much food again, we got a doggy bag to go for the kittens by the hotel.  The nice dolphin lady suggested a place for local sweets and walked there and got some to go.

We arrived back at the room and almost everything was till wet to our shock, so we;ll we leaving everything out tonight until we head out to the airport tomorrow morning.

Crete here we come!